You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.
Nehemiah 9:20-21
This recounting of Israel in the wilderness is part of a broader, beautiful season of renewal in which the priests and Levites assembled the Jews returned to Jerusalem. It all starts in Nehemiah 8:1-12, where they began with three hours of reading the Law, followed by instruction and explanation upon what had just been read. This led to worship and praise spontaneously. The very next day they agreed to celebrate the feast of tabernacles as a step of obedience and spent an entire week doing so again with a daily emphasis on much reading of God’s Word. This was done every day of the feast (Nehemiah 8:13-18).
It is after this intense season of exposure to God’s Word that a time of repentance and confession begins which culminated with the Levites leading a public confession of sin that recounted all the history of Israel in its scope and confessed the specific ways the nation had sinned against the Lord. It was an amazing, tearful, broken, but renewing day, and again for three hours they publically read scripture, followed by three more hours of prayer and confession.
And all this led to strong commitment which is what true repentance does. There is a tangible turnaround. By the end of this extensive revival, the Jews produced and signed a sealed covenant document that committed the people to the Law, to obedience and worship of the Lord, and to God’s mercies for their confessed sin. And it was all saturated in God’s Word... the entire process... from beginning to end. Truly the Bible can change us, if we will let God do so through His Word!
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